New Rush Hall School: Apple spurs digital creativity
A school for children experiencing behavioural, emotional and social difficulties (BESD) has been rated ‘outstanding’ by the UK Government’s Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) inspectors – while its use of Apple’s creative technology earns special praise. The top grade assessment is highly unusual for such a specialist school.
New Rush Hall School’s belief that digital creativity can have a dramatic effect on attainment amongst its ‘hard to reach’ learners has also been heavily underscored in recent research. The influential British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTA) reports significant improvement in attainment and prospects of many students in 10 other BESD schools using New Rush Hall School’s pioneering work with Apple tools.
“While some of our children have difficulties with aspects of learning, the main issues we focus on are the inability to work, play and socialise in mainstream schools in an appropriately acceptable and cooperative way”, explains the school’s Headteacher, John d’Abbro. "Our job at New Rush Hall is to help give children the confidence to overcome those problems, and there is no doubt that digital tools help to do that. Once children start feeling and doing better, their self-esteem is raised and they can start to learn more effectively”, he says.
The school, near Ilford in north east London, teaches up to 72 children aged five to 16 in classes of no more than eight pupils, with up to 12 more children in a new ‘early years provision’ for under sixes. Many of the children have been permanently excluded from their previous schools for disruptive behaviour. Others have special educational needs including attention deficit, hyperactivity and learning difficulties.
New Rush Hall School aims to help the children manage their behaviour and where possible return to mainstream schooling, by improving their learning capability and behaviour. Apple’s multimedia tools help deliver this aim by giving children resources which promote belief in their potential to achieve.
John d'Abbro believes technology plays a big part in unlocking the talent of the children in the school. Children with behavioural difficulties communicate their problems in ways most schools find inappropriate. Technology can help them express problems in a productive and creative way, and in the language of their digital world contemporaries.
Technology will not succeed on its own, however. “If you don't have an effective relationship with the children then it won't work”, he says. “They won't suddenly start behaving themselves just because they have access to an iPod or a MacBook. They behave because they are trusted. We see technology as a tool which enables us to catalyse that relationship and that trust”.
John d’Abbro’s long-standing commitment to the learning and behaviour benefits of technology was sparked by an experience that had a lasting effect on his approach to teaching. It involved a young child who had not spoken for two years before joining her new school. Teaching staff suspected she may have been abused but it wasn't until John d'Abbro showed her how to use a computer that she began making progress.
“Using a very simple drawing package, we got her to draw the experience of her trauma”, he says. “It wasn’t very long before she was able to say in her own words that she had indeed been abused. After building a level of trust with me, she came out of herself and allowed us to convey to her that she could get help. Without that initial stimulus she would probably have gone on hitting people and displaying aggression”.
Through Apple's 1-to-1 learning scheme, every child and staff member at New Rush Hall School has an individual notebook. Every classroom has an Interactive White Board. Children use an iPod to access and showcase their work.
The cornerstone of the creative strategy is this provision of wide access to Apple technology. “We now have children of nursery school age using MacBooks”, says John D’Abbro, “even if they are only in the school for a few weeks. They don’t have any trouble with keyboards”. The children regularly use multimedia tools such as iMovie and other modules from the iLife suite to make short films animation, comics, podcasts and photocasts.
“The children change their perception of themselves and what they are capable of achieving”, he says. “It also changes other people's perceptions of them. It's good for their self-esteem”.
New Rush Hall School is entirely Mac-based, with around 120 computers working on a wireless network. Every staff member has access to an iPod Shuffle and all office staff use an iMac. “We’ve not gone down the road of saying we’ll use PCs for administration and Macs to do creative work. We use Apple technology to handle everything, including our administration and finance”, says John d’Abbro.
The school’s learning technology is a web-based management information system. It enables staff to access school information remotely – from the history of pupils and their parents’ contact details to the curriculum, exam results and school attendance figures. Forthcoming developments in the use of the package will include downloading homework from the Internet, while parents will be able to log in and access reports on children’s progress at any time from a home computer.
John d’Abbro recognises that, as well as helping them to learn, technology also provides the children with valuable post-school skills. The children are taught keyboard skills “because they will be just as valuable as handwriting skills in future”, he says. The school is also entering students for the British Computing Society’s ‘DigitalCre8or Award’, as preparation for vocational qualifications.
Conscious of the need to safeguard vulnerable children from accessing inappropriate Internet sites, the school uses special software to check what is being viewed – and the children know that their access is overseen. Efforts are also made to increase awareness of child exploitation. The school has developed this work in conjunction with the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) a British Government agency.
Once those checks are in place, the school aims to use its technology to broaden the children’s horizons as much as possible. It recently participated in an international scheme led by a US school to share experiences of everyday life by an exchange of QuickTime movies.
